B.Y.O.B.W., OR, BRING YOUR OWN BINDER'S WASTE
MASSARI, Francesco.
In nonum Plinii de naturali historia librum castigationes & annotationes.
Basel, [Hieronymus] Froben [and Nikolaus Bischof], [March] 1537.
4to, pp. [16], 367, [17]; woodcut Froben device to title, Z4v, and 2b4v, large woodcut initials; light spotting throughout with occasional light foxing, dampstain to margins of a few leaves, but a very good copy; bound in near-contemporary vellum, spine and tail-edge lettered in ink, edges cut with a drawknife and stained blue, sewn on 3 split tawed thongs, pastedowns of printed waste using the title-page of Primum volumen consiliorum … (Venice, Pinzi, 1516, EDIT16 CNCE 4150); near-contemporary ink ownership inscription ‘Flavij Floriani Fulginatis u[triusque] i[uris] d[octoris]’ both to title and on printed waste.
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In nonum Plinii de naturali historia librum castigationes & annotationes.
First edition of Massari’s commentary on the ninth book of Pliny’s Natural History, on fish and marine life, bound for – and quite possibly by – Flavio Floriani using printed waste from his own library.
The present volume is inscribed by the jurist and poet Flavio Floriani (fl. c. 1555–1592) of Foligno, Umbria. The pastedowns consist of two halves of the title-page of an earlier legal work, printed in red and black within a large woodcut border and curiously bearing the same ownership inscription as the present volume, suggesting either that Floriani provided a binder with waste paper taken from a book in his library when he had the Massari bound or – plausibly, given the quality of the work – that he bound the volume himself.
USTC 658059; VD16 M-1337; Adams M-861.
